Housing and Residential Tenancies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-14
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Lynn Ruane (IND), University of Dublin

We oppose section 6 as it contains some consequential amendments for section 7, which introduces residency requirements for the provision of accommodation to homeless persons. It amends section 10 of the Housing Act 1988, which provides for accommodation supports for people experiencing homelessness to provide reference to the newly created section 10A, which is inserted by section 7. We are opposing that section and the consequential amendments in this section. The section also contains some concerning provisions ,which extend the provisions of section 10(8) of the 1988 Act, which allow for housing authorities to remove people from homeless accommodation.
The amendment in section 6 allows for a person to be removed from emergency accommodation if he or she refuses an offer of social housing support. There are many reasonable reasons why someone might refuse an offer of support. If we consider the needs of a mother and her children in emergency accommodation, there are plenty of scenarios where accommodation offered might not be suitable and, therefore, may be refused. We are concerned at how the provisions of this section may lead to vulnerable people being denied emergency support in times of critical need.
I worked in homeless accommodation for many years and there is no one reason people refuse social housing; there can be very different reasons. I remember one man we worked with for a long time to try to support him into the social housing he was offered and he was terrified. He had been homeless for so long and he was worried that he would be isolated. He worried that he would be away from the support networks around him. It was a wet hostel so residents had residency for many months at a time.
There are women in emergency accommodation who have refused high apartment blocks because their kids have certain presentations within their autistic diagnosis where their ability to measure risk with a balcony is not there. They are actually terrified that their child will go over the balcony of a high-rise building. There are also people who refuse accommodation because it is 30 km past the city where their kids are in school, and maybe there are parents who live in the community they want to be close enough to because they cannot afford childcare and they rely on other parents to pick their children up from the school. There are people who have huge vulnerabilities and do not have access to the financial means to be able to accept an offer of support that would only put them in a more vulnerable position. On the idea that we would remove someone from emergency accommodation because they refused a social housing offer, are we saying we will remove someone from emergency support and they will just be on the street? It is quite confusing to me that any Department or policymaker would come up with a scenario where that seems like a good thing.
The cost in the long run to the State in impacting someone's health or family or whatever in that way means it does not make economic sense either in terms of how we support people to move safely into communities or social housing which meets their needs, rather than compounding the vulnerabilities a person already has.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:15+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-14